APO team movements 2018

Over the years the APO team has been remarkably stable, but it is inevitable that some people will leave while new people arrive – and with big new projects the APO team continues to grow, which is very exciting. The main team is based at Swinburne University of Technology, with collaborators based at partner universities and organisations including University of South Australia (UniSA), RMIT University, and the University of Melbourne. 

Welcomes

In 2018 we welcomed a number of new people to the APO team. Les Kneebone is a taxonomy and metadata expert who was formerly at Education Services and joins APO as Information Architect. Ian Muchamore recently joined APO as Collections Editor for the Linked Semantic Platforms (LSP) for Social Infrastructure Project and Adam Scott is assisting us with user needs research for the same project while completing his studies at Swinburne University. Craig Burton has come on board to help deliver a number of projects on built environment policy and practice. And our latest team addition is Claire Kelly, joining us as part-time Assistant Editor.

We would also like to welcome Yong-Bin Kang who is working with Prof. Timos Sellis at Swinburne University on text mining and entity recognition. Data scientist Jaewon Kim is analysing APO’s search functionality, based at RMIT University and working with Prof. Mark Sanderson, and Jess Pacella is collection curator at UniSA for Prof. Susan Luckman’s research collections. There will be further additions at our partner organisations in 2019 as part of the LSP Project. 

And a special welcome to Assoc. Prof. Amir Aryani who is the new Director of APO partner the Social Media Data Lab (SoDA Lab) at Swinburne University. The SoDA Lab will be working to provide new ways to work with data scientists and social and linked data from around the world. 

Michelle Zwagerman, who came on board to research and set up the CRC for Low Carbon Living Knowledge Hub in 2016, is now focusing on the LSP for Social Infrastructure Project and overall operations at APO, as well as continuing to oversee the built environment projects. 

Farewells

After 12 and a half years first as Managing Editor, then Research and Strategy Manager and finally as Director, Amanda Lawrence is finishing up at APO and Swinburne University to complete a PhD at RMIT University on publishing and public policy. Amanda says farewell and thank you:  

‘I am very proud that APO continues to provide a much-needed service to the research and policy community as essential public knowledge infrastructure. Thank you to everyone that has worked with me over the years to keep APO going – it has been fantastic to be part of such an exciting and worthwhile project. I know that APO has helped with the information and research needs of so many people working on the front lines of policy research, analysis, and implementation across so many critical social issues. 

Thanks especially to the individuals and organisations that have provided financial support and participated in grants and funded projects. I’m really excited to be able to spend some time investigating how the public knowledge ecosystem works and hope to keep in touch with many people via the public knowledge network that is being established and through other events and activities.’

In 2016 – thanks to a LIEF project with RMIT University – we hired Anna Hyland as the Urban and Regional Collection Curator. Anna has since had her third child and is now back at RMIT working with Prof. Bruce Wilson and continuing to grow and extend the regional collections on APO. We are very happy that she is back as part of our extended family. 

We also said farewell to Andrew Zammit a few months ago. Andrew is also working on a PhD, and is already well known for his expertise in national security and terrorism research. Andrew joined APO for what was intended to be a short period to finish a project and ended up staying for many years and making a fantastic contribution as Deputy Editor. We wish him well in his studies. 

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There are clearly many more welcomes than farewells which is great. And many people working on APO as collaborators in other organisations which gives us more flexibility as projects come and go. If you would like to partner, work for, volunteer or undertake a placement with APO please get in touch.